Dot Hill Corp., which makes storage systems sold by OEM partners,
is adding an iSCSI storage area network (SAN) and RAID 6
capabilities over the next few months with a new midrange system
and beefed up data protection software to follow next year.
The moves come as the financially struggling vendor tries to
solidify its place among entry-level system OEMs and make a move up
into the midrange. Dot Hill executives laid out their roadmap this
week during an analyst day in New York.
First up, Dot Hill will announce its first IP SAN at Storage
Networking World (SNW) later this month -- an iSCSI version of the
2730 Fibre Channel system that Dot Hill brought out last year. CEO
Dana Kammersgard said Dot Hill will also have a new midrange
system, code-named Krypton, early next year. "It's fundamentally
built on the same architecture [as the 2730] but allows us to move
to the midrange," Kammersgard said, of the system that will
officially be known as the 5730.
Dot Hill did not give product details of the 5730, but it almost
certainly will scale higher than the entry-level 2730. That system
holds 12 drives and up to 42 terabytes (TB) with an expansion shelf
and comes in two or four controller configurations.
Kammersgard said Dot Hill will also have a firmware upgrade to
support RAID 6 that lets users rebuild two failed drives
simultaneously.
Dot Hill has been adding OEM customers to go with its long-time
partner Sun Microsystems Inc. and newer partner Network Appliance
Inc. (NetApp). Dot Hill disk enclosures are used for Sun's
StorageTek 3000 low-end system and NetApp's new SAS-based FAS2000
systems. This year, ONStor Inc., Sepaton Inc., Promark Technology,
Hammer plc and Maximum Throughput Inc. started shipping or signed
deals to ship systems from Dot Hill.
Phil Davis, executive vice president of worldwide field
operations, said Dot Hill plans to offer replication software to go
with the snapshot application it added last year. He said Dot Hill
will support remote replication and mirroring next year, even on
its low-end systems. "Those are big holes among entry-level
competitors," he said.
Dot Hill is looking to expand beyond its historic entry level
space into the midrange where the market is bigger and there is
less competition among vendors that supply OEM products. It's
unlikely that Dot Hill will be able to land major deals with the
likes of EMC, IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) but can help smaller
vendors compete with the large companies.
"Dot Hill can say, 'Here's a turnkey thing, we've tested it,
supported it and we've done all the things we've done well,' said
analyst Tony Asaro of the Enterprise Strategy group.
Asaro said LSI Corp.'s Engenio OEM relationship with IBM shows
how the smaller vendors can outdo their larger partners. IBM's
biggest selling midrange SAN system remains the DS4000 supplied by
Engenio, despite the rollout of the IBM-manufactured DS6000.
"There's no IBM intellectual property in the DS4000," Asaro said.
"The DS6000 has IBM IP in there, and end users wanted nothing to do
with it."
Dot Hill also pledged timely support of 8 Gbit Fibre Channel, 10
Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) and 6 Gbit SAS systems when the
technologies and market are ready for them.
Dot Hill will need a strong product line to reverse its
financial slump. At analyst day, the vendor revealed its
third-quarter revenue will be lower than expected. It said revenue
would be between $43 million and $46 million, down to its previous
guidance of $50 million to $54 million and down from $54.8 million
in the same quarter last year. Dot Hill attributed the downfall to
NetApp shipping the FAS2020 and 2050 systems later than
expected.
Dot Hill said it expected its losses to be less than expected,
giving new guidance of a loss of 6 cents to 11 cents per share
compared to previous forecast of a loss of 9 cents and 14 cents per
share. Still, it looks like the Carlsbad, Calif., vendor's seventh
straight quarter of losing money.
"We understand this is not a not for profit business,"
Kammersgard said.